IP: Re:Twins now outlawed

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/9.0.2509
> Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 13:50:27 -0500
> Subject: Re: IP: Twins now outlawed
> From: Virginia Postrel <vpostrel () dynamist com>
> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
>
> > > The House banning of human cloning (news sample below) will open up
> > > fertility clinics to indictment, because the sundry fertility techniques
> > > have led to vast new quantities of twins and triplets, each one of them a
> > > technically induced human clone intended for birth.
>
> I was writing in opposition to this bill when everyone else was ignoring it,
> and I have great respect and affection for Stewart Brand, but this is
> incorrect. The twins and triplets who have become increasingly common are
> fraternal, not identical, the result of drugs that induce unusually high egg
> production or, in the case of in vitro fertilization, of implanting multiple
> fertilized eggs. The bill does threaten to outlaw a less common procedure
> that involves infusing an egg with another woman's cytoplasm to correct
> mitochondrial defects.
>
> It's a terrible bill, rushed through in a moral panic with almost no
> opposition. The science and disease groups all but ignored it while focusing
> all their attention on getting federal dollars for stem cell research. Some
> of the arguments apply to both cases, but the money-for-freedom trade the
> disease groups in particular are making is a dangerous game. And comments
> Tom Daschle made yesterday suggest that the Democrats may not block the bill
> in the Senate, as many observers had assumed. (I've got postings on this at
> http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html and earlier pieces at
> http://www.dynamist.com/cells.html and
> http://www.dynamist.com/latcells.html.)
>
> --
> Virginia Postrel (virginia () dynamist com)
> Editor-at-large, Reason magazine
> Author, The Future and Its Enemies
> "Economic Scene" columnist, The New York Times
> Contributing editor, D Magazine
> http://www.dynamist.com | http://www.reason.com
> --
> Read my commentary on The Scene http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/